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Methods of Ekphrasis & A Neon Tryst

The centuries-old act of ekphrasis—describing one artform in the medium of another—has traditionally existed as direct description. Defined as a literary description of, or commentary on, a visual work of art, ekphrasis has evolved within the last two centuries with the emergence of objet trouvé and notional ekphrasis.

Notional ekphrasis offers three, currently established possibilities of expression:

description of mental processes such as dreams, thoughts and impulses of the imagination;

one art describing or depicting another work of art—which as yet is still in an embryonic state of creation, in that the work described may still be resting in the imagination of the artist before he has begun her creative work; expression may also be applied to an art describing the origin of another art, how it came to be made and the circumstances of its being created; and

description of an entirely imaginary and non-existing work of art, as though it were factual and existed in reality.

To these three, I submit a fourth (as one might an Oulipan constraint): description via created persona/additional perspective.

In 2007, I began ekphrastically working with poetry and film. Then unaware of notional ekphrasis or its established “types,” I attempted a self-created method (not necessarily new to actors or fiction writers) of responding to film poetically.

First, I viewed a film from beginning to end, uninterrupted (with sound, often paying close attention to subtitles). I then recorded initial reactions as the film progressed (I drafted poems) to each scene.

Traditional ekphrasis

Second, I generated a persona, a “ghost director” from whose perspective I could write when re-viewing the film—this time without sound and accompanied by natural/environment sounds/background and/or music (random) to “soundtrack” the film. The “ghost director” not only determined “newly cut” scenes (poem form) and created new dialogue (poem text), but also served as mediator/transcriber of an emerging dialogue happening between actual film and developing poem.

Created a new perspective (POV), altered external environment by enhancing natural sound or adding music (stimulus); attempted to capture overarching, implicit dialogue between two art forms themselves

Third, revision/amalgamation of poems from groups A and B.

Conglomerate poems from both groups to form one for each “newly cut” scene/poem

Instead of simply describing or directly responding to the films I viewed (my reaction, my perspective) these added layers of perception/revision helped yield an interesting outcome, most recently evidenced in my book A Neon Tryst. Of this outcome/experience, reviewer James Pate (author of The Fassbinder Diaries) has stated:

“The poems aren’t about the films in any literal way. Instead, the poems do something more interesting, more ambitious. They capture what I imagine to be a fairly universal and yet unusual experience. You fall asleep on the couch while watching a movie or TV show. You wake up around two or three in the morning. You have a sense of intense lateness, even if you aren’t sure what time it is. It feels like no one else in your house or apartment building or town or city is awake. You can feel their sleep around you. The room is dark except of the TV screen. You see the images dance around and try to make some sense of them. They seem more than confusing: they seem chilling, as if they were being broadcast from a failed state, or from some subterranean nightclub that only existed for a few weeks. There’s a sense of magic and conspiracy. The images look utterly alien, and yet intimate too, as if what you’re watching was an extension of the dream you might have been having (even a dream you don’t remember upon waking up).”

Published by linaramona

Lina ramona Vitkauskas (Lithuanian-American-Canadian, b. 1973) is the author of White Stockings (White Hole Press, 2016); SPINY RETINAS (Mutable Sound, 2014); Professional Poetry (White Hole Press, 2013); A Neon Tryst (Shearsman Books, 2013); HONEY IS A SHE (Plastique Press, 2012); THE RANGE OF YOUR AMAZING NOTHING (Ravenna Press, 2010); Failed Star Spawns Planet/Star (dancing girl press, 2006); and Shooting Dead Films with Poets (Fractal Edge Press, 2004).
In 2013, she was selected by Eleni Sikelianos for the Henry Miller Memorial Library Ping Pong Journal Award, and in 2009, she was selected by Brenda Hillman for The Poetry Center of Chicago’s Juried Reading Award. She has also been nominated by Another Chicago Magazine for an Illinois Arts Council Award. Her publications include Rain Taxi, VIDA, Dusie (Canada), Atticus Review, POETBOOK, Spork, The Awl, Matter, Coconut, Tarpaulin Sky, Requited, DIAGRAM, TriQuarterly, The Chicago Review, The Toronto Quarterly, VLAK (Ed. Louis Armand, Edmund Berrigan), The Prague Literary Review, White Fungus (Taiwan; recently displayed at MoMA), and more.
In 2000, she earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from Wright State University, where she participated in a summer workshop with Nikky Finney, the 2012 National Book Award Winner in Poetry.
Lina is a current faculty member and the marketing director at the Chicago School of Poetics, as well as the co-editor/designer of the 14-year-running online literary magazine, milk magazine (featuring Robert Creeley, Wanda Coleman, Ron Padgett, Michael McClure, and Japanese surrealist, Yamamoto Kansuke, among others).
For 11 years, she has been a part of Chicago’s poetry community in many capacities—as a reader, collaborator, co-curator, co-founder, organizer/facilitator, instructor, literary arts nonprofit director, and contest judge. Reading series Lina has been featured in and projects she’s been involved with include: Chicago Public Radio’s “Chicago Amplified,” Myopic Books, Danny’s, Red Rover (@ OUTER SPACE), Woman Made Gallery, Series A, Quimby’s, Balzekas Lithuanian Museum, Wĭt Rabbit, Dollhouse Reading Series, 100,000 Poets for Change, HUMAN MICROPOEM at Occupy Chicago, Discrete, Around the Coyote, Future Perfect + New Media, Evanston Public Library, and many more.
Professionally, Lina holds certifications from Northwestern University (in philanthropy) and DePaul University (pedagogy), and possesses more than a decade of experience as a senior-level copywriter, editor, and marketing strategist for major clients such as Sears, McGraw Hill, and Northwestern University.
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